


Dance With Me

by EdgarAllenPoet



Series: Monster Hunting [fics about TAZ Amnesty] [12]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Barclay and Mama are in love, But monster hunting doesn't make being in love easy, Dancing, F/F, F/M, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Long-Term Relationship(s), Lost Love, Parent-Child Relationship, Slow Dancing, Wedding Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 13:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21180014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdgarAllenPoet/pseuds/EdgarAllenPoet
Summary: "Are they okay?" Aubrey asked, and Dani rolled over to stare at the ceiling. She picked up Dani's hand in both of hers and looked it over, fiddling with it idly."They love each other," Dani said, and she knew that was true.---Barclay and Mama don't dance anymore.





	Dance With Me

**Author's Note:**

> I have this headcanon that Barclay and Mama have been in love with a long time, but that Thacker's disappearance really did a number on them. On their mental health, on their relationship, everything. The idea of them sticking together through that and regrowing their love when they're a little more healed just sits real cozy in my heart, okay?

Mama and Barclay used to dance. 

It wasn't out of the ordinary to find them dancing in the kitchen, wrapped in each other's arms and swaying to the music playing from the CD player they kept on top of the fridge. There were nights where Moira would play the piano, something upbeat and happy, something they could bounce too. Thacker had taught Dani to polka in the living room of the Lodge while Mama and Barclay spun around them, a force of nature in movement, a speeding train, laughing at and with each other as the floorboards danced under them.

Jake had gone through a phase and learned a slew of popular dances-- Single Ladies, and Backstreet Boys, and the Soulja Boy thing. They used to get music video rerun episodes on MTV and he watched them religiously, and if he begged hard enough, he could convince Barclay to join him. Mama never danced with them for that, but she did stand in the doorway and laugh and laugh.

Thacker would tell them stories too when Dani was younger about Mama and Barclay back in the old days-- "The nineties, Thacker, it ain't ancient history!" Mama would complain, but seeing as Dani came to earth circa. 2009, "the nineties" might as well have been forever ago.

The stories Thacker told were of all kinds of things, things Dani was always delighted to hear about. Mama and Barclay used to be trouble. There had been a bar in town that shut down forever ago with a dance floor and a cheap juke box, and apparently Mama and Barclay spent countless nights there between hunts and after long days, spinning each other around.

Sometimes Dani would come downstairs in the early morning and find them just holding each other, swaying gently back and forth, one of them humming a song that must have meant something to them but was indiscernible to Dani. She'd leave them to it, choosing not to interrupt. She figured they deserved to have moments like that.

Then Thacker disappeared.

He'd been there one day, eating dinner at the Lodge the night before. He didn't stay for board games, claiming an early morning and a poor night's sleep. Mama offered him a bed-- he was family, he had one whenever he wanted, and they had plenty to spare-- but he'd waved her off and headed on home.

He'd hugged Barclay before he left, and he'd put his hand on Mama's shoulder and just held on for a long moment, and that had been the only indication that something was wrong.

And then he was gone.

Mama and Barclay didn't dance after that.

Nobody bribed Moira to play fast paced songs on slow nights. Dani didn't find them holding each other in the hallway. Barclay's CD player became his and his alone, and he played it on low volume early in the morning, humming along as he tended to breakfast.

They didn't go out. They didn't hold hands.

Thacker wasn't a part of their relationship, but he was a part of them. He was part of the Pine Guard, part of the Lodge. When he left they all felt it. It was worse, somehow, than the others who had left before.

"Dance with me?" Aubrey said one day, taking Dani's hand and smiling wide at her-- clueless to the meaning of what she was asking, right there in the kitchen, a CD playing in the little radio that Barclay kept on top of the fridge. Dani just blinked, stared for a moment. Jake beat her to the punch.

"Let's show her how it's done, bro," he said, and Aubrey cackled as she let Jake take her hands and they bounced around, doing a bastardization of the simple step Barclay and Mama used to seamlessly fall into, back when they still did that kind of thing.

Aubrey blew a kiss at Dani every time she spun past, and Jake made faces over her shoulder. They tried a dip, and Aubrey stumbled as she dropped him. They ended up falling on top of each other in a sprawled out mess on the kitchen floor, howling with laughter, and that was when Barclay walked in.

"Tell me you're not cooking," he'd already been saying as he walked in, and he froze and regarded the pair on the floor. He glanced at Dani, and she shrugged in response, not offering any help. "Okay," he said, "Um. What... are you doing, actually?"

"Dancing," Jake answered. Barclay held a hand down, and Aubrey took it so he could haul her back to her feet while Jake army crawled his way towards the kitchen table. Barclay murmured something about 'at least I don't have to sweep now.'

Dani wouldn't have expected it, having not seen it in the six years Thacker'd been gone-- not since she was a kid-- but Barclay broke the mold by chuckling and shaking his head. He said, "That's not dancing. You want to dance, Aubrey?"

And of course she did.

It was simple, nothing crazy or fun like he and Mama used to be capable of it. He lead her as they bopped around the room, one hand clasping hers and the other on her side. He'd asked permission before reaching there, like a gentleman, even though he was doing nothing more than touching right above her hip. She had to put that same arm on his own, below his shoulder, since the height difference between them was enough to make her crane her neck to look up at him properly.

"And spin," he said, lifting her arm, and she spun. She stumbled, he caught her, and they both laughed as they dove back into it. Dani climbed up on a chair to reach the radio and turn the music up louder, and Jake wolf whistled from the seat he'd taken on the kitchen table.

At one point while the song was winding down, Barclay took a wrong step and the two collided, both of them stumbling as he stepped on her foot.

"Thought it was Bigfoot, not left foot," Dani teased him.

He pointed at her in a way that was supposed to be stern but missed by a mile. He said, "Well excuse me, I'm not exactly used to leading."

That made Aubrey laugh. "Who were you dancing with that could lead you around?" she asked, "You're like eleven feet tall!"

Barclay made a face, opened his mouth to respond, but Dani beat her to the punch. "Mama," she answered, and two things happened at once.

"What's all this racket up here?" Mama asked as she stepped into the doorway, grinning at them and crossing her arms. The smile managed to reach her eyes.

The song had changed without any of them really noticing, and Barclay and Aubrey had stopped dancing without really meaning to. As the chorus of the current song kicked in, CD warbling 'rock me Mama like a wagon wheel, rock me Mama any way you feel,' Barclay looked over at Mama with laughter shining in his eyes. He held his hand out.

"May I have this dance?" he asked her, and his smile was so wide, and Dani watched with dread in her gut as the smile left Mama's eyes and melted away. She stepped back a bit, looked him over carefully.

She said, "Not with my knee the way it is."

She said, "Not with my bum leg."

Barclay's smile fell away like he was trying to paint it onto jello, and he said, "Right, of course." She nodded, and she walked past them through the kitchen, out the back door, and away. Barclay seemed to cave into himself a little.

"I should get dinner started," he told them, reaching effortlessly to mute the music and keeping his eyes to himself as he stooped to retrieve something out of the pots and pans cupboard.

Aubrey asked, "You want any help?" and the look on her face suggested she was lost, and concerned, and not sure where the line of politeness was drawn for this situation. Barclay shook his head.

"Nah, it's easy, just a one man job I think."

Aubrey opened her mouth again, ready to push, but Dani just took her arm and pulled her out of the room. Jake had already up and disappeared.

"So that was weird, right?" Aubrey asked as she followed Dani up the stairs and down the hall to her bedroom. They more or less shared it these days, though Aubrey still had her own. It was a common occurrence to come home and find either of them occupying each other's space in their absence. Dani collapsed into bed, wishing not to think about it too hard, and Aubrey flopped down next to her with a quiet 'oof' and, shortly after, a sigh.

"Are they okay?" she asked, and Dani rolled over to stare at the ceiling. Aubrey picked up Dani's hand in both of hers and looked it over, fiddling with it idly. She tucked her head in against Dani's shoulder, short curly hair tickling her neck. 

"I don't know," she said honestly. "Individually, I mean, yeah. But together I'm not so sure anymore."

"Are they together?" Aubrey asked, and Dani shrugged again.

She said, "In some ways, probably." She didn't have a better answer. Barclay and Mama had been different when she'd first moved in, first come to Earth. They'd been nigh inseparable, always at each other's sides and in each other's pockets, hugging in the hallways, dancing barefoot on the earliest mornings.

They didn't share a room, both of them with their own personal space to occupy, but Dani didn't know if that was any different. She'd been too young to pay attention before. She just knew that as a child she'd figured they were together, had thought they were married, because they looked at each other the way married people tended to. The way she'd seen on her parents before... everything.

"They love each other," she said, and she knew that was true. She and Aubrey stayed like that, tucked in close to each other. Had Dani known about Thacker in the basement-- or if Aubrey had known about the change that occurred when Thacker disappeared, who Thacker had been before becoming the monster in their basement-- then they would have found the whole situation tragically ironic. Dani had thought to herself that things could get better if Thacker came back, that Barclay and Mama could smile at each other like they used to, if only he hadn't disappeared.

But Dani didn't know, and Aubrey didn't tell, and they kept these things a mystery between themselves as they lay in bed and waited for dinner.

  
\---

  
It's a chilly spring morning, the air just starting to warm enough that they could sit outside without the air stinging their skin. It cleaned out Barclay's lungs as he sighed out a yawn.

"Remember when Thacker taught us how to square dance?" Barclay asked. He'd been getting up in the morning as Mama had been heading to bed after a long, sleepless night. They collided in the hallway, bumping into each other gently, and she'd followed him down to the kitchen without a word and joined him on the front porch.  
She was warm pressed up against his side, and the steam curled out of his mug and tumbled lazily away. He watched it go and thought about dancing.

Mama was silent for a beat after his words, and hand was hot where it settled on his knee. She sighed and squeezed gently. He bit his lip, ticklish. Laughing would ruin the mood, probably. She replied, "That ain't dancing, and he knows it."

_Knew_ it, Barclay thought.

Instead he said, "Fun, though," and she sighed again.

"Yeah, it is."

Barclay nodded. "We used to have fun."

Mama didn't reply to that. She didn't flinch or push him away, though, when he slouched enough to rest his head against her shoulder. She was kicking off the porch, making them sway back and forth on the swing. Barclay hummed in the back of his throat while she sipped her coffee, squeezed his knee again.

_Rock me Mama like a wagon wheel_, was the melody he hummed and she swatted at his leg gently. He grinned. She said, "Cheesy ass song, that is."

"I like it."

"It's fine."

He picked his head up to look at her full on, give her a genuine grin, pleading a bit with his eyes. "You wanna dance with me, Madeline?" It was early in the morning so the only ones up to witness would be the deer creeping through Dani's garden. Nobody would have to know. It could be like it's not even happening, if they wanted. Something easy to forget.

Mama just sighed, and she patted his knee a few times before standing. "I need to get some sleep," she told him, and then she was gone.

Barclay stared at the steam and sang to himself.

  
\---

  
Jake was fourteen earth years old when he found himself at Amnesty Lodge. He hadn't known that coming through, of course, they did things a bit differently over there and, with the circumstances of his last cycle there, he hadn't really kept track.

He didn't really talk about his last cycle over there, except to Barclay once, because he figured if anyone would understand it was him. Barclay was the one who'd found him hyperventilating on the roof outside his bedroom window in the first place, and he'd climbed out there with him-- squeezing his massive frame through the tiny opening, somehow-- and made old man noises as he settled down.

He didn't yell at Jake for being on the roof. He didn't give him grief for crying like an absolute baby, sobbing messy wet patches into the knees of his pants, making it look like he'd gone crawling through a puddle. Barclay had rubbed his back between his shoulder blades and let him talk, and he'd talked about his own experience leaving Sylvain, and he'd stayed out there until Jake started to nod off against his shoulder.

He'd hugged Jake tight before nudging him off to bed with a kiss to the forehead and a gentle suggestion that he get some rest, and it left Jake feeling befuddled and a little bit dizzy, though that might have just been the sleeplessness.

Jake didn't tell Mama, but after talking with Barclay she'd come up to him and promised he was safe, no matter what, that anyone who tried to change that fact would have to go through her to do so. She didn't ask questions, didn't push for an explanation, and didn't give any details to suggest Barclay told her the whole story, though Jake could never be sure.

It didn't come up again, but it didn't feel like keeping a secret. The others didn't talk about their exiles either.

He'd only been around for about a year before Thacker disappeared. He didn't notice the difference, not the way Dani did, but he did sit up with her at night as she talked about it. They laid side by side on his bed on top of the covers, fan in the window doing very little to subdue the muggy West Virginia heat. Jake had listened to the fan and the cicadas outside and the tree frogs and the sound of Dani's breathing, and he listened as she talked about Barclay and Mama and the changes she'd seen in the both of them.

Jake felt a little bad for not noticing anything more dramatic.

"I want to be in love like that one day," she'd told him. "But I don't want anything to be able to break it. I want to be untouchable."

"You will," Jake said, and he wondered if he'd ever feel the same. If he'd ever feel capable of trusting someone like that, ever felt the need to have a partner, to have a soul mate. Would that be on earth, he wondered? Or would he get to go back home? Did he need that? Did he want that?

Jake didn't think so, figured he'd already found something like a family. It'd be guilty to ask for anything else, and he didn't quite understand the appeal. He thought that maybe he'd grow out of it.

Years later, in the present, he still wasn't sure.

"They don't dance anymore," Dani had told him, and he'd thought of Barclay dancing with him in the living room, thought of Mama watching and laughing and Thacker pulling out some sort of plastic box strapped to his wrist.

He'd said, "I'm documenting," as he pointed it at them. "Let me do my job. These are important Pine Guard memories, after all!"

Jake hadn't known him well, but he'd known he was good. He didn't notice a stark difference in Barclay and Mama's behavior. Barclay still sat with him and talked, with or without asking, if it seemed like Jake needed it-- and he always seemed to know. Mama still hugged him and ordered him to behave himself and tried to shoo him out of the house to go make friends, still lectured him about safety and secrecy, still stood as an immovable force before him anytime it seemed his well-being might be compromised.

They still became family, one way or another, but so was Dani. So Jake listened when she talked, and when he watched a heartbreak play out across Barclay's face right there in the kitchen, Darius Rucker's caramel smooth voice serving as a soundtrack for the whole event, Jake kept his head down and slipped away. Give him space, let them deal.

He didn't know what Dani was talking about, but he trusted her.

Sometimes there were things people didn't choose to talk about.

  
\---

  
It's a chilly winter evening, the kind of chilly that seeps through your clothes and into your bones. Makes your fingers move slow and your toes ache. Barclay had barely warmed up since their hunt two days ago. Following recon and clean up, following tending to wounds and stowing away weapons, he'd burrowed into bed under as many blankets as he could scrounge up and stayed there as long as his patience would allow.

He'd slept for fourteen hours, and he was cold enough when he woke up to wrap himself up in a blanket before padding down to the kitchen. He was thinking about hot coffee and a warm shower, and his feet froze on his walk downstairs. He wished he'd had the foresight to wear socks. Slippers. Something.

Mama found him at the coffee pot, bundled up and staring blankly at the slowly accumulating brown liquid. He felt her before he saw her, felt her press up against his back and hook her chin over his shoulder. She wormed her hands under his blanket and pressed them to the bare skin of his abdomen, and he shivered and hissed a breath through his teeth.

"You're an icicle."

She said, "We're going out tonight." He poured them each a cup of coffee.

He was still cold when they went out, but he followed their lead and stripped off his jacket as he followed Mama and Thacker into the low lit, crowded bar. He showed his ID at the door- forged, but not obviously- and the guy waved them in with a lazy wrist and a fog in his eyes. They settled down against a wall, Thacker getting a round of beers for all of them, Barclay reminiscing about the thick fur coat he had in his natural form and how much warmer that would make him than his measly human fuzz.

Thacker and Mama talked familiar and easy as the alcohol warmed Barclay's blood a bit. He heard Mama's speech get easier, watched Thacker's nose and cheeks and ears glow red. He laughed. There was something in his teeth. Barclay ate a pickle-- deep fried, soggy, luke warm-- off the table in front of them.

He didn't hear the music, or at least he didn't pay any attention to it, until Mama stopped mid-word and grinned like a kid on the last night of candlenights. "Dance with me," she said, asking in a way that sounded like an order, the way she always did. As if Barclay could ever tell her no.

She took his hand and he followed her out there, feeling a little unsteady from the sleep and the booze, the greasy food and the unfamiliarity with whatever they were doing. She made it easy for him, though, taking his hands and pulling him along, swinging him in close so they were pressed chest to chest, pushing him back away from her. He spun when she lead him to, laughed as she smiled at him, and the two of them swept dance floor to the tune of whatever was playing on the juke box. It would grow to be one of Barclay's favorite songs.

There hadn't been much dancing on Sylvain, whatever had once been was now abandoned in a world with very little to celebrate, but this felt natural. Dancing with Mama, letting her spin him around wherever she pleased, moving together, laughing together. The song shifted, from whatever was playing before to something slow and sweet, and instead of drifting back to the table the way he'd expected them to, Mama caught him by the belt loops and pulled him into her. Chest to chest, her hands on his hips and his arms looped naturally around her neck, she grinned at him like she couldn't bear not to. When she pressed a kiss to his neck it warmed him from head to toe, had him ducking his face down next to hers, hiding against her neck as they swayed easy and slow. Crowded bar or not, in that moment they were the only two people in all of West Virginia.

"Nice jitterbug," Thacker said when they got back to the table, a certain look in his eyes that Barclay couldn't interpret but that made Mama glare and kick his shin under the table.

"Pretty sure ya can't jitterbug by accident," she told him. Barclay didn't have a single damn clue what they were talking about, but Mama's hand was hot where it was settled on his knee, and Thacker reached across the table to pat him on the side of the face until Barclay couldn't help but laugh and jerk his head away.

"Ya'll are adorable," Thacker told them. Mama kicked him again under the table. Barclay sipped at his beer-- luke warm, not working nearly hard enough to quench his thirst-- and decided he was quite keen to dancing, maybe, if it made Mama smile at him like that.

\---

  
The wedding was a hell of an affair. The Lodge was bustling, occupied by everyone who had any business being there. Aubrey and Dani-- moved into one room together, instead of two-- as well as permanent residents Jake, Barclay, Moira, and Mama. Duck and Minerva had flown in and were a mystery all of their own, Aubrey hadn't quite figured that out yet. Janelle was there, and Alexandra. Thacker's old place had been foreclosed long ago with his disappearance, so he settled down at Amnesty any time he wasn't wandering through the wilds. He had a guest with him, someone young and shy who didn't talk much, someone who'd elected not to attend the wedding at all.

While the Lodge was crowded and busy-- Aubrey loved it-- the event itself was even more so. It seemed like everyone in Kepler had either been invited or just invited themselves, not that either bride minded. Dani had grown up here, and Aubrey had come to think of the place as home. Anyone she looked at twice was invited, even the Hornets, though Aubrey made a point of shooting Keith increasingly dirty looks every time she laid eyes on him.

It was an outdoors event in the sprawling grassy property near within sight of the Cryptonomica-- Aubrey thought it was only right that Ned was there to see it too-- and they'd completed all of the necessary wedding events they'd settled on, but human and sylvan. It was, in her humble opinion, absolutely beautiful.

Dani was breathtaking.

She was all Aubrey could look at all night. Sure, she appreciated the decorations they'd thrown together (pumpkins and beautiful flowers and lights that twinkled like fireflies), and everyone in attendance looked amazing, out of work clothes and into their Sunday best. Sure, she laughed until she cried at Jake attempting to break dance, and she marveled at the dumbstruck looks Duck was throwing at Minerva as he patiently explained every question she brought to him-- weddings, apparently, were strange events for warrior alien species.

Aubrey also took the time to distract Duck's coworker, Juno Divine, from the stark white tree that stood behind and decorated the altar. She assured her that yes, of course it was real, there was no way Juno could remember every single tree, and it totally wasn't grown by an otherworldly force of creation.

Juno seemed dubious, but Dani had appeared at Aubrey's hand and dragged her away to safety. She called over her shoulder that she ought to ask Duck about it if she had questions, make that his problem for a little while. What else were friends for anyways?

Point being, Aubrey spent the whole night pretty well distracted. Between talking to each and every person that had taken the time to attend the most important day of her life and staring at Dani-- her WIFE-- with every spare second outside of that, she didn't have the attention for much else.

That was until Jake came sprinting in out of nowhere, launching himself at them and wrapping both arms around Dani, shaking her a bit frantically until she managed to swat him away. If Aubrey wasn't wearing a suit that cost more than anything she'd ever bought in her whole entire life, she probably would have wrestled him and tried to mess up his hair-- he's combed it for the event. As it was, she was a grown up now, married and everything, and she didn't want to ruin her clothes thank you very much.

"Look look looklook!" Jake was saying, pointing off across the way to the other edge of the dance floor. Aubrey scanned the crowd to see what on Earth he was pointing at, what one Earth made Dani gasp quietly and reach for her hand. Aubrey took it, idly pulling Dani's hand to her lips to press a kiss to the back of it, and followed her gaze. That's when she saw it.

The song was something unremarkable, slow and saccharine sweet. Barclay and Mama were absorbed in it though, absorbed in the song and in each other. Her hands were pressed flat against the small of his back, holding him in close, and his arms were looped gently around her neck. They stared eye to eye, smiling at each other the way Aubrey had been smiling at Dani all day. Dani pulled Aubrey close, tucked in tight against her side and wrapped her arms around her middle. Aubrey pressed a kiss to the crown of her head above a delicate wire flower crown, and Jake sighed happily before leaning into her other side, chin propped on Aubrey's shoulder.

Aubrey laughed.

They didn't have long to watch until the song ended, switching suddenly to something bouncing and energetic, something Aubrey imagined old-timey people dancing to in poodle skirts and saddle shoes. She let go of Dani as Jake dragged her onto the dance floor so they could dance around each other, absolutely ridiculous. She smiled and laughed and nodded when, from across the way, Duck caught her eye and held his hand out to her.

Before she could head over, however, someone caught her elbow. She turned to see Thacker, someone she wasn't quite family with yet, but she knew that sharing family could be enough for this kind of thing. He pointed out at Barclay and Mama.

"They used to dance all the time," he told her. She nodded, wondering why she'd never noticed them dancing together before. She headed off in Duck's direction when Thacker released her eyebrow, a little bit lost in the pure joy painting Mama and Barclay's faces as they moved together.

"Nice jitterbug, Maddie!" he heard someone-- Thacker-- shout, audible somehow above the music.

She heard Mama shout back, "Learn what that means and comb your beard!"

Aubrey caught up with Duck, picked his hands up and pulled him-- smiling-- into tumbling around the dance floor. "And spin," she said, emulating what Barclay had taught her, and they laughed themselves silly when Duck spun around flawlessly and caught her hand again.

**Author's Note:**

> themlet on tumblr (gayprophets on here) talked about Barclay and Mama swing dancing. that's not really what spawned this, but if it weren't for their fics I wouldn't be writing cobbclay in the first place, so credit where credit is due.
> 
> i hope the time jumps make sense in this. it felt like it flowed in my head, but then again, it's my head. yknow how it is.


End file.
